Thursday, June 12, 2008

Shamelessly Partisan Anti-Conservative News Bits

1. This Couillard thing keeps getting more and more intriguing, even two and a half weeks after the Minister's resignation. An aid in Michael Fortier's office is gone, after it's revealed he dated Couillard. And accusations of influence peddling are flying! Will the fun never end?

3. Meet the new Judge Gomery - Jeffrey Oliphant. And it didn't take long for the first conflict of interest connection to emerge (I personally don't think it's a big deal that Mulroney appointed him, but I'll be curious to see if the opposition/media latch on to this at all).

20 Comments:

It looks like she had dinner with Day. Public Security Minister by day, socializing with "known" figures by night. Just when we thought his stock was rising, we discover that all's not well in the land of Stockwell Day.

“Does it make me a bad person to be glad that Pierre Polievre is in trouble?”

Go easy on the kid. We were all young once.

I can't believe that harper appointed Bernier to be Foreign Minister. This guy took Couillard to his hotel room on their first meeting. Thank goodness the Russians etc didn't get him with a honey trap. Bernier would have ended up carrying bugs into cabinet meetings..

Harper doesn't even attempt to hide his disinterest in the idea of impartiality. Just get the thing over (announce the commission) and let the opposition howl. Certainly its not as tho Oliphant couldn't do the job, but at Martin saw the importance of picking someone who came from another tree, instead of picking some ol' tired Liberal judge on Sponsorgate.As to Maxime, this isn't just a 'slap-n-tickle' show, Mitch. This is about incongruities and possible fissures in the security of our government. The Russians knew of the western politicians' weakness for young women and they exploited it. Is it not possible, with what we know now, that the Biker Gangs, or now known as CON party members, are using the same tricks?

Jimtan...going easy on the kid is what you say when a youngster is in an entry level job. Not when he is in the House of Commons. Pierre is a jackass and is in a job where he has to be accountable for being a tool. I hope he is defeated soundly in the next election.

How exactly would they get him with a honey trap? They can't exactly threaten to tell his wife. The honey trap only works when the person being trapped actually cares if the relationship becomes public.

"Certainly its not as tho Oliphant couldn't do the job, but at Martin saw the importance of picking someone who came from another tree, instead of picking some ol' tired Liberal judge on Sponsorgate."

Yes, but there is a big difference. Liberals make a big stink about how the judiciary is independent and apolitical while the Conservatives don't. If Martin hadn't picked a Conservative judge, the Conservatives would, rightly or wrongly, have attacked the judge as a Liberal hack.

However, the Liberals can't do that because they would be undermining their own message that the judiciary is independent and apolitical. If the Liberals were to accuse Conservative judges of being hacks, why should Canadians believe that the Liberal judges aren't hacks as well?

“The honey trap only works when the person being trapped actually cares if the relationship becomes public.”

Actually, Bernier was naïve. He thought that flaunting his mistress meant that he had nothing to hide, Wrong!

A person in high office or security responsibility should never allows a clink in his armor. He does not allow persons of uncertain status to get close to him.

Bernier can frolic since he is single. But, he must be careful of who he does it with. An experienced woman could lead him into embarrassing or illegal situations that could be recorded.

A blackmailer could make an initial small bite out of Bernier. Then, escalates his demands if the victim knuckles under. Bernier has access to strategic information about NATO and NORAD. He would be a prize beyond measure.

No one can be certain about how a blackmail victim responds. Will he run to the police, or bend over? The point is that Bernier should never put himself in such a situation. And, harper appointed an amateur as Foreign Minister.

Then, a policy. A single policy. Held up as the hallmark of future Liberal rule.

This single policy comes at a time when a rise in fuel prices appear to be the single most economic destabilizing influence facing Canadians. At historic highs, fuel costs threaten to push Canadians in general into an economic tailspin, and certain segments of our society (independent truckers, low income homeowners with home heating being one of the biggest fixed expenses in this cold climate to name just two) into the abyss.

And so at this time Dion choses fuel (carbon) tax as the single issue to promote.

Is there is a better example of an out of touch, narcissistic, academic liberal elite choosing to put their own self described superior ideals over the interests of a public he considers in need of his high mindedness (which public is apparently too 'ignorant' to reduce consumption of fuel even in the face of massive market driven rise in prices)?

I think Poilievre is a stupid twit (he is the worst kind of party hack, who has accomplished nothing in his life, and risen through the ranks by being a sniveling sycophant) who should have shut his trap give or take six months of the apology (moreover, reparations for forcible assimilation are a SEPARATE issue from our obligations to natives under the BNA act, and various treaties) However, I don't think he is wrong to address the issue. The reaction of the Liberals, the press, and ultimately the Conservatives themselves on this matter suggest that we can't debate Indian Affairs policy in this country.

I recall an economics professor and Reform MP getting a similar treatment when he said something like "most people wouldn't work if the government paid them to live in Hawaii". His phrasing was offensive, and counter-productive - reservations are not much like Hawaii, but his essential argument is one that forms the basis of our welfare policy (if you set welfare rates too high you will increase, not decrease unemployment - if you do it over a 50 year span, and require people to live on remote, economically unproductive land, that is owned collectively, not individually - unlike the rest of the economy - then yeah, you are going to get unemployment, poor and declining conditions, as the limited space on reservations becomes occupied by more and more people).

I am not saying we should wheel out the 1968 white paper again. But clearly the status quo (and Kelowna was nothing more than fixing cracks with chewing gum) is not working, apart from a small minority of native professionals (who end up speaking for all natives) and Indian Affairs bureaucrats who have made a living out of this. The obvious starting point to any major reforms should be the obligations that all Canadians have to our native citizens - obligations that are not being met because of the letter of the law (eg. non-taxation of natives, collective land ownership, and less-than-transparent band governments) not in spite of it.

On topic, however, most of the media seem to have toned down on the Oliphant thing after an initial burst. For me, it's rather like the Alberta Returning Officers for the election, the issue isn't so much whether they'll be dishonest, but rather whether their appointment gives us an election that cannot be questioned. It's very much the same thing, with Oliphant as the choice, even if he's perfectly on the up and up, if he comes out with a judgement that Mulrooney is clean, it'll solve nothing because people will just attribute it to bias.

As for Pierre, the only way to "take it easy on the kid" is to take it out on the voters in Nepean-Carleton for choosing such an inexperienced rube. I prefer to trust in the wisdom of the group and assume that they didn't know exactly what they were electing. We may all have been young once, that doesn't mean we were all stupid. Ask any kid old enough to know what a job is: "Is it good to insult someone on the day your boss is apologizing to them?"

Couillard? I dunno what to say, she's obviously bad news, but Bernier was such a show-stoppingly bad move from day one -- chosen because of his riding rather than his reasoning, and that played out repeatedly until he conveniently gave Steve a way to ditch him without having to question his own judgement in hiring him in the first place.

“Perhaps I should emphasize the facetious nature of my post... but nowhere does it say that your spouse has to be cleared to Top Secret... are trying to restrict our Constitutional rights.”

Aren't your posts usually facetious?

Fortunately, I am a serious guy. Harper would have spared himself a lot of grief if he had sorted himself out at the beginning of the New Government. Cadscam, in-out, Bernier, McKay, O'Conner, Hiller, Clement, Fortier etc. I'm sure that we have not seen the end of it.